The Scar - China Mieville [172]
He stared down at the water that turned below him. It was hard to believe that it was happening, that such colossal efforts were taking place, link after link slotted together in a vast series under the fabric of the city.
There were several languages active in Bellis’ life. She felt exhilarated to relearn her disciplines: the nameless technique she had perfected for segmenting her mind, keeping her internal dictionaries distinct; the language trance she had last used in Tarmuth.
Aum made quick progress with Salt. Her pupil was talented.
During the afternoon’s discussions with Tintinnabulum and the other scientists, every so often—to Bellis’ pleasure—Aum would intercept some question before she had translated it and written it down. He would even write down some of his own answers, in basic Salt.
It must be extraordinary for him, Bellis thought. Salt was the first language he was conscious of having both spoken and written dimensions. It was unthinkable to him to hear High Kettai—it had been a meaningless concept. To hear Salt questions and to write the answers in the same language must be an astonishing mental leap, but he dealt with it with aplomb.
Bellis did not warm to Krüach Aum. She found his constant wide-eyed curiosity draining, and she felt no strong sense of personality beneath it. He was a brilliant, boring man whose culture had made him like a precocious child. She was cheered by the speed with which he learned Armada’s language; she suspected that she would be mostly redundant soon.
High Kettai and Salt surrounded her every day.
Her own head was the preserve of Ragamoll. She had never been one of those linguists who thought in the language she was using at the time. Silas was the only person to whom she spoke in her first language, in the rare times that she saw him.
There was a day when a fourth language entered her life, briefly. Quiesy—more popularly known as Deadish. The language of High Cromlech.
She still did not really understand Uther Doul’s reasons for talking to her about his home tongue. After one of her sessions with Aum, he had asked her if she enjoyed learning new languages, and she told him truthfully that she did.
“Would you be interested to hear a bit of Quiesy?” he said. “I don’t often get to speak my own tongue.”
Dumbfounded, Bellis had agreed. That evening she had gone with him to his quarters aboard the Grand Easterly.
The sounds of Quiesy were formed in the back of the throat, softly barked, the noises swallowed, and interspersed with precisely timed silences as important as the sounds. It was, Doul warned her, a language of strange subtleties. Many of the thanati gentry had sewn-shut mouths, he reminded her, and others had voice-boxes too rotted to work. There were modes of Quiesy spoken with hands and eyes, as well as written forms.
Bellis was fascinated by the gentle language, and was held by Uther Doul’s performance. In his quiet, controlled way he was enthusiastic as he recited several passages of what sounded like poetry. Bellis realized that she was not there to learn the language, but to appreciate it as an audience.
There was still a foreboding in her at being in Doul’s company, alongside other emotions. Alongside excitement.
He wordlessly handed her a glass of wine. She recognized this as an invitation to stay. She sat and sipped and waited, looking around his room. She had expected some hidden stronghold, but he lived in a berth like thousands of others. It was sparse: there were a desk and two chairs, a shuttered window, a chest, one small black-and-white etching on the wall. Below the window was a weapons rack, full of familiar and arcane armaments; and in the corner of the room a complex musical instrument, with strings